Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 26, Number 33, August 20, 1999 U.S.A. and NATO as a whole, have lost the ability to conduct presently ongoing world crises, I could not guarantee suc- regular warfare. The chief reason is economic. As in “Desert cess, but I am the only figure who might have a chance Storm,” and as is shown in the resumed war on Iraq, and of success. the recent war against Yugoslavia, NATO is not capable of fighting war to win with military force on the ground. The very adoption of the lunacy of “Air-Land Battle 2000” by the U.S.A. attests less to what the U.S. military forces can do, Yeltsin coup in Russia than what they have lost the capability of doing. In the war against Yugoslavia, NATO did not fight war; increases war danger indeed, both NATO and the President of the U.S.A. insisted, that this was a punishment expedition, not an actual war. What by Konstantin George NATO’s bombing attacks did, was to destroy the economy of most of the nations bordering the Danube east of Vienna. Once the British monarchy prevailed upon President Clinton On the morning of Aug. 9, Russian President Boris Yeltsin to abandon the reconstruction perspective he had announced issued a decree, firing Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and earlier, that entire region of southeastern Europe has been dismissing the cabinet. In a statement from the Presidential transformed into a bloody mass of attrition which will soon Press Office, as carried by Itar-TASS, Yeltsin named Vladi- destroy, chain-reaction style, the entire economy of both mir Putin, who has been head of the Federal Security Service northern and western Europe. (FSB, the successor of the domestic KGB) since July 1998, To assess the larger strategic realities in which the Blair- as Acting Prime Minister. The appointment of Putin was a driven search for nuclear confrontation with Russia is situ- transparent coup by the Yeltsin family and its friends among ated, the war-threat becomes more immediately ominous than Russian financial oligarchs and the allied Western financial would be implied by the facts I have referenced thus far. We oligarchy, intended to thwart the orderly constitutional transi- must take into account the strategic military implications of tion of Russia to the post-Yeltsin era through State Duma the presently onrushing meltdown of the world’s financial (lower house of Parliament) elections on Dec. 19, and Presi- system, including that of the U.S. economy. dential elections six months later. Significantly, the British state apparatus (representing a The events which rocked Moscow mirror similar moves much higher level than lackey Tony Blair) has announced a toward extra-constitutional political shifts, or coups, being special security program, named “Operation Surety,” to go taken by the British oligarchy at home. Calculating from the into effect, beginning September 9, 1999. This operation is standpoint of a post-financial-crash world, these oligarchical designed to anticipate a deadly social crisis’s eruption under circles are positioning themselves to assure absolute power, the conditions of the world financial meltdown expected for through emergency measures, like those contemplated in the interval between September 9, 1999 and the close of the “Operation Surety,” a plan for military rule inside the United year. No one I know—and I do have many high-level sources Kingdom itself. in various parts of the world—can give me a definite date, Putin’s closest ties are to former Prime Minister Viktor other than “soon, perhaps next week, perhaps October,” for Chernomyrdin, the notorious Russian cohort of U.S. Vice the expected date of the chain-reaction collapse of the world’s President Al Gore, the City of London crowd, and British- financial system. However, that kind of collapse, of a kind allied financial interests on the European continent—whose far worse than October 1929, is already onrushing; it is not perspective is to weaken Russia for coming decades, while something which could happen; it is something which, in fact, they exploit its raw materials and run the country as a Third is already happening. World colony—and Anatoli Chubais, the most notorious In- The intervention of the effects of this world financial col- ternational Monetary Fund henchman of post-Soviet Russia. lapse into the present strategic situation, automatically and These connections are lawful, because the coup is a brazen immediately changes all of the determining parameters of the attempt to keep the IMF comprador layer in place at all costs. worldwide strategic situation. No existing government could last long enough to carry out a pro-warfare posture effectively ‘He thanked me—and fired me’ under such circumstances. The dismissal came right after a morning meeting in the Notable is the situation in Russia itself. Whatever else Kremlin between Yeltsin and Stepashin, who had just re- may happen there, and there are many possibilities, virtually turned from Dagestan. He had been sent to that Caucasus all extremely dramatic ones, the present situation in Russia republic over the weekend by Yeltsin, ostensibly because of is not to be expected to last past the end of September, if the escalating crisis there. that long. The news of Stepashin’s ouster broke shortly after 8 a.m. Were I President of the U.S.A., I would know how to Central European Time (10 a.m. Moscow time). Russian TV deal with this mess. Given the very advanced state of sundry showed a somber-faced Stepashin addressing his outgoing EIR August 20, 1999 International 55 © 1999 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. cabinet as follows: “This morning I visited the President and State Duma. They will take place on Dec. 19. Exactly on he signed a decree on my resignation. He thanked me—and schedule as it is provided for by the Constitution and the law.” fired me.” Confirming that he was angry over his dismissal, Then, Yeltsin proclaimed that Putin is his choice to succeed Stepashin said: “I expressed my position concerning the resig- him as President of Russia: “Next year, for the first time in nation to Boris Nikolayevich, but, this is his right. I told the the country’s history, the first President of Russia will hand President that I have been, am, and will remain with him until over power to a newly elected President. Whatever the case, the end.” he will be your President, esteemed citizens of Russia, who Stepashin’s dismissal is the first step in an obvious maneu- will have won in the course of clean, honest elections. I thank ver by Yeltsin to postpone the Duma elections. Aug. 9 was to you for your attention” (emphasis added). have been the day when Stepashin was to formally announce As one leading Russian military expert commented on Dec. 19 as the date of the elections. What Yeltsin said later Aug. 10, Yeltsin dumping Stepashin for Putin “makes no that day on TV could not mask the fact that an unconstitutional sense if he is interested in free and fair elections.” The coup had been launched. military source explained: “Declaring Putin as his appointed Yeltsin’s decision to sack Stepashin was made on Aug. 5, successor as President is a non-starter; it guarantees that when he informed Putin of his coming appointment as Prime Putin will get 1-2% of the vote.” This expert’s reading is, Minister. What triggered the decision, was the merger, in early August, of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s Otechestvo (Fatherland) Movement, with the All-Russia Movement, led by Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimaiyev, and which has the support of most of Russia’s 89 governors. Stepashin had LaRouche on Russia’s refused to take a hostile position against this powerful elec- toral alliance, and, in the interest of national reconciliation, ‘coup from above’ in 1998 had even put out feelers to it, thus angering Yeltsin. Signals were abundant in the Russian media in the days After an earlier palace coup in the Yeltsin entourage, Lyn- before Aug. 9, that a coup was brewing. The weekly Argu- don LaRouche wrote an article titled “Russia: A Coup menti i Fakti on Aug. 3 published a column, entitled “A Plot From Above,” published in EIR, April 3, 1998. Here are Against Stepashin,” saying that the Kremlin had demanded excerpts. that Stepashin take steps against Luzhkov and others, but that “Stepashin does not have the strength to do this,” and that On the morning of March 23, 1998, international news Yeltsin’s Chief of Staff, Aleksandr Voloshin, was pushing dispatches from Moscow featured the announcement of for Stepashin’s ouster. On Aug. 4, Interfax said that the cre- an ongoing purge of the Russian government of Prime ation of the new electoral alliance had “shattered” Stepashin’s Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, ordered by President position: “More and more often can the Presidential adminis- Boris Yeltsin. Our task here, is to provide the reader tration be heard complaining that Stepashin proved weaker an appropriate insight into the strategic circumstances in than he seemed to be, and that by his desire not to quarrel with which this coup from above has occurred. any of the current political and business figures, he demon- Coup in Russia? The historically literate mind recalls strates excessive flexibility.” The article named Putin as one images of the famous 1905 and 1917 revolutions. The first possible successor to Stepashin. of these was triggered by the combination of a London- On Aug. 6, Moscow Times, in an article entitled “The orchestrated, international financial crisis of 1905-1907, [Yeltsin] Family Has Few Legal Options Left,” stressed that and the impact of the Russo-Japanese War.